Cooking

You guessed it! I convinced Himself to write to you all again about something very near and dear to his heart. So without further ado, take it away!

Everybody within earshot knows how much fun I have making paella. If you’re from Valencia, you probably don’t want to read any further, because I took your wonderful idea and did non-traditional things with it; technically, this is arroz en paella.

They’re always based around one main ingredient — well, they are the way I make them, anyway — and recently, I based one on duck. It worked, so we’re sharing the joy and showing you how to make one yourself.

Many of the quantities here are approximate, based entirely on what was available and what looked right at the time. Would you like to know more?

Like this:

You can probably imagine what a relief it is, when you have no idea what to do for dinner, just nipping in to Bilder & de Clrq and there is a selection of meals all laid out for you, all pre-packaged in portions for two. On this particular day, I fell for the Duck. As I am want to do.

Like this:

Solstice was on Saturday, which means two things around here. The first is that the days will begin getting longer from here on out (yay). The second is that Winter has finally begun, so you’d never know the days are getting longer because it’s so overcast. Longest darkest day of the year suddenly makes sense of all the lights, doesn’t it?

Like this:

For those of you with long memories you might remember that Giftmas Day cooking last year was a new and unequivocal low point in my kitchen efforts. But not to be dissuaded, when I found a frozen duck the other day at the markets, I was all over it!

Like this:

We’ve been back to Bilder & de Clerq. With a store like this, how could we not?!? Himself decided one night that we needed to try their take on bolognese; so homeward bound he tromped, with fresh ingredients in hand!